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Interna Universo II/Rules
Sign-Ups and Game World The map is divided into thousands of provinces. Players may claim upwards to fifty provinces. Each province claimed increases starting population. Smaller starts will have a richer population to balance. One-province islands (most of the Pacific, for example), only give a tenth of the population most mainland provinces will. Once you’ve made your claims, fill this out. Power Base and Legitimacy A country’s power base represents the groups and institutions that hold the most power in the country’s governance. Legitimacy, on the other hand, is how the political elite justify their rule (but mainly represents modes of succession). Power Base There are three power bases: Military, Corporate, and Administrative. Military: Power resides in the hands of the country’s officer corps and general staff, who enjoy immense privileges in the civil administration of the country and the country’s economy. Army, naval, and air force capability have a larger positive effect on stability. Corporate: Power resides in the hands of the upper strata of society: CEOs, old money aristocrats, etc. With this power base, bribes have a larger positive effect on stability. Administrative: Power resides in the hands of the state bureaucracy itself. With this power base, intelligence and cyber capability have a larger positive effect on stability. Legitimacy There are three forms of legitimacy: Hereditary, Elective, and Appointed. Hereditary: Leadership passes through blood; father to son, brother to brother, sister to cousin, etc. With this legitimacy, the longer a ruler reigns, the more stability the country gains. Besides the ruler, there is the heir, who either has a strong claim to succession or weak claim. Upon the death of the ruler, the stability gains from a long rule are reversed. This legitimacy’s pros and cons compound. When things are going well, there’s a greater chance that things will continue to go well. However, when things turn sour, there’s a greater chance they will stay sour. Elective: National leadership is nominally decided by popular will through periodic elections. With this legitimacy, the player may call for an election whenever, which gives a moderate boost to stability upon successful completion of the election. Elections change the national leadership and have large effects of the relative strengths of ideologies in the country. However, a player may…tweak the elections beforehand to get a preferred result. The good thing about this legitimacy is its ability to give a quick boost to stability. However, free elections are difficult to control and may put a party into power the player doesn’t necessarily wish to be in power. Restrictions on elections may be a good way to control outcomes, but this decreases the stability gained from elections. Furthermore, stability decreases over time after an election, meaning elections need to be periodic to ward against potential problems. Appointed: This legitimacy is unique in that it isn’t entirely legitimate. With this legitimacy, leadership can be changed more or less at will. There is no stability gains associated with this legitimacy directly. Instead, picking a new leadership merely shifts the power of ideologies in the country (which can increase stability). However, a change in leadership lowers stability. The penalty reverses itself over time. Centralization and Legislatures Centralization There are six levels of centralization: Anarchy, Coalition, Confederation, Federation, Hegemony, and Unitary. Increasing centralization increases tax efficiency, and at unitary governance only the minimum amount of tax revenue is lost. However, decreasing centralization increases base stability. Legislatures Some are legitimate representative of a country’s ideological preferences while others are just rubber stamps for a dictatorship. In countries with legislative bodies, a portion of tax revenues are assigned to the legislature for spending. Depending on how supportive the factions in the legislature are of you, you will be granted a greater amount of executive spendable EP. Otherwise, legislatures will automatically spend money. What they spend it on is dependent on the ideologies in the legislature. Ideology Ideologies are grouped into three broad groups: Political, Religious, and Transhumanist. While most ideologies concern themselves with how society and government should function and be structured, the groupings give an idea about the central focus of ideologies in the groupings. In the listings below, you will see “tend to lean for/against”, “preferred”, etc. Note that these are not absolute. For example, there are Federalists that are fine with a dictatorship so long as it is a federated or confederated dictatorship. Government Ideology A government has an ideology, which goes a long way to summing up that government. Government ideologies can be mixed ideologies. For example, a country could have a Socialist Cult of Personality-type ideology going on. Political Ideologies Socialism: By the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, the only truly communist power left in the world was the soon-to-be Autonomous Soviet Republic, whose collapse in the early-2040s put the ideology on life support until the late-21st century, where demands of war and survival justified greater state planning in desperate states. Like socialism and communism of old, the ideology has a habit of springing up in downtrodden urban youth. Religious Ideologies Moralism: Moralism is a general umbrella term for a great number of ideologies among many religions. The general gist of Moralism is that a society’s laws should generally reflect religious beliefs and values. Unlike political ideologies, there tends to be lower interstate comradery sine Islamic Moralism and Christian Moralism can be greatly different. The extreme ends of Moralism may call for “protecting” or “liberating” preferred religious minorities in atheistic or heathen states. Assimilationsim: Assimilationism is a fairly new ideology whose modern beginnings can be traced back to the turn of the 22nd century. It seeks to, in the words of one of its earliest founders, to “devour and digest” all religions to form one, universal, religion. While many of this persuasion tend to be fairly lighthearted in their beliefs, some will go as far as extreme Moralists to spread their constantly evolving beliefs. Cult of Personality: A Cult of Personality is defined as “a cult promoting adulation of a living national leader or public figure”. The leader’s personality cult will always lend their full support to the government. However, the death of the leader is very damaging to the national influence of the personality cult. Transhumanist Ideologies Visionary Thought: Visionary Thought is brought to us by the leader of a mid-21st century cult by the name One Vision. Visionary Thought sees humanity’s future in cybernetic enhancement. The ideology is remarkably popular among the richer strata of corporate society. Directionism: Directionism is the name given to an ideology advocating for uplifting humanity genetically. Directionism is a troubled ideology in many societies, as it is often co-opted by monarchists, anti-democratic, pro-eugenics groups. Purianism: While there are those who wish to replace their entire bodies with prosethics, and those who want to create the perfect designer child, there are those who believe in the separation of technology and the human body. Puriantists range in their commitments, with an minority even refusing to use vaccinations. Technogaianism: Technogaianism is an ecological ideology whose proponents want to bring humanity to balance with nature and the environment using technology. The belief was given its modern form by Brazilian thinkers in the second quarter of the 21st century. Economy The economy has many moving parts, and players have many levers to pull to influence and shape the economy. It can be overwhelming, but here is a broad overview. A country’s workers will use publically and privately owned capital to produce goods and services. This is the national income, which is split between owners of capital and labor. This income is either consumed or saved and reinvested. Some of this is sold and exported to other countries. Affecting this system are taxes (on wages, consumption, capital income), trade restrictions (tariff and non-tariff barriers are rolled in together), monetary considerations, military production, infrastructure and education spending, and more. No problem has a silver bullet, and the actions other players take affects your economy in some way, even if only a little bit. With that said, I’m going to say right now that if you ask me what the effects of any given economic policy or action is, the answer will likely include “on the other hand”. There is no silver bullet to any problem, and there is always a tradeoff. Infrastructure and Education Two key area of government spending are education and infrastructure. Education increases the productivity and idealism of your population. The more you spend per pop, the greater the effect. However, these effects build up over years and aren’t immediate. Infrastructure works a similar way. However, your stock of infrastructure capital increases your infrastructure upkeep. Taxes and Trade Restrictions There are three broad forms of taxes: Wages, Capital, and Consumption. Wages is a tax on wages, capital on capital, and consumption on consumption. Trade Restrictions are restrictions on trade against another country. Restrictions can run from 0-100%. As restrictions rise, tariff revenue increases up to a point, at which point revenue begins to fall. You can also levy sanctions and ban exports to a country, which immediately raises their trade restrictions you to 100%. These cases will be highlighted in red. Economic Liberalism Economic Liberalism is a measurement of how favorable the economy is to private investors. The scale runs roughly from 0-100%. The higher the number, the better off the private sector can operate. This number is heavily affected by the ratio of public industry to private industry. All else being equal, if you have 50 Public Sector EP and 50 Private Sector EP, you will have an EL of 50%. Economic Liberalism will also affect “foreign income” a government earns. Lower levels increases foreign income, which is taken out of the foreign income of the private sector. Public and Private Sector A government may spend money to increase the size of the public sector. The public sector, like the private sector, will earn returns on its investment. However, the government will also need to pay upkeep on the public sector. The larger the public sector is relative to the private sector, the less efficiently the private sector will operate. A government can also perform direct investment in another country’s infrastructure or private sector. The latter will earn income for the investing government, will some (if not a lot) going to the private sector. This depends on the Economic Liberalism of the country. The Private Sector is like the public, only it does its own thing. A government can shape how the private sector acts and where it invests and doesn’t invest, but it can’t fully direct it. Debt and Credit Ratings Besides taxes, a government can raise money by issuing sovereign debt. A player can issue one or more bonds a turn, and receive the EP for issuing bonds the next turn. All bonds have a face value of 10 EP. When issuing bonds, the country should specify how long the bond goes for (from 1 to 30 years). Also specify whether you want to pay a lump sum at the end or not (see example). If no rate is specified, the bond will be issued at a rate that gives the player the face value. Repayments on bonds are made automatically each turn. A player can reverse a bond payment, but that would put the player into default. The interest rate that you have to worry about depends on several factors, chief among them your country’s credit rating. Furthermore, the longer the time period of the bond, the higher the interest rate will be (because of risk). Example: I issue ten 10-year bonds at 10% interest. I will pay 10 EP per turn for ten turns, plus a 100 EP on the tenth turn (if lump sum). If not lump sum, then I will pay roughly 16 EP per turn for ten turns. Military War has been a constant of human history, and it is no different in the 22nd century. There are six key tools of war: The Army, Navy, Air Fleet, Intelligence, Cyberwarfare Division, and Space Fleet. The military is key to defending against both external and internal problems. In a country whose government is cursed with low legitimacy and popular support, the army and secret police are invaluable. Manpower, Equipment, and Troop Quality A soldier, sailor, or cyberwarfare specialist all have two things in common: They need to exist, and they need tools. Increasing manpower in one of the six branches is as simple as “recruit X pops as soldiers/sailors/etc”. Dismissing works the same way. Manpower can be fractional such as having “.5 Soldier Pops”. Equipment represents guns, tanks, ships, planes, computers, software, etc. EP can be spent on purchasing equipment for the six branches. Equipment is more important for some branches than others. (Ships for the navy is more important than tanks for the army!) Finally, troop quality is how well your soldiers are trained. EP can be spent on improving troop quality. On the flip side, cutting spending on troop quality can decrease troop quality over time. Education affects base troop quality, because a more educated population usually fights smarter than a less education population. Fuse these together, and you get capability. A combination of soldiers in the army, equipment for the army, and troop quality gives Army Capability. It is Capability you throw at your problems, not individual soldiers and equipment. Neutral Territories All neutral territories are defended by 1 to 2 Army Capability. Category:Rulesets Category:Interna Universo 2